1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures herein generally relate to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system and a program thereof which performs data communication with other apparatus via a transmission line.
2. Description of the Related Art
A remote conference system, including a video conference system which realizes participating in a conference from remote locations by connecting plural terminal devices via a transmission line, such as the internet, and sending and receiving video and voice data bi-directionally, has already been known.
In the system sending and receiving video data, however, according to a state of the transmission line, such as insufficiency of bandwidth, a video image may be degraded or interrupted. For the above problem, Japanese Published Patent Application No. H11-224152 discloses sending and receiving information related only to user's motions, which is far lees than real video data, and anthropomorphic images are displayed. According to this art, conducting a remote conference via a transmission line with narrower bandwidth becomes possible.
However, in the remote conference system according to the related art, in which motion information is sent and received merely handles the problem arising due to the state of bandwidth. In communicating with a remote location via a transmission line, a delay, in addition to bandwidth, may inhibit smooth communication.
In a face-to-face communication, the time from an utterance on one side till a response, such as an utterance or a motion on the other side, is quite short. In communication via a transmission line, however, a delay for a round trip may occur until receiving a response from the other side.
If the above delay becomes greater than a predetermined length, the frequency of occurrences of silences and overlapping of speaking becomes greater than in the face-to-face communication, and thus the communication becomes non-smooth. For handling this problem, Takeshi Nishikawa, Hiroaki Kawashima and Takashi Matsuyama, “Visual Filler: Visual Stimuli to Facilitate Smooth Communication over TV Conference System with Transmission Delay”, FIT2007, Information Technology Letters, pp. 311-314, 2007, proposes a method of reducing a choppy communication due to transmission delays in a communication using real video data, by drawing an object showing the delay during a time period corresponding to the delay.
A problem arising due to the transmission delay in a communication using a transmission line will be explained here. In the remote conference system according to the related art, a client terminal translates received data as it is and outputs it to an output device. In this case, if a delay time becomes greater than a predetermined value, a user receives a response from the other side displayed on the terminal after the delay time, and then smooth communication may become difficult.
The reason of the above difficulty is that when for example the transmission delay for one way is 500 ms i.e. the transmission delay for round trip is 1000 ms, a response by the receiver to a motion of the speaker's hand is drawn on the client terminal used by the speaker after a delay of at least 1000 ms.
Generally, in the face-to-face communication, a reaction is often given within 200 ms including an unconscious reaction. Therefore, the communication via the transmission line is conducted under an unnatural environment for communication.
However, in a face-to-face conversation, a “pause” is often longer than several hundreds of milliseconds. Generally, such a “pause” is not recognized as unnatural. This is because that the person, who will respond to the utterance, performs a motion to fill the “pause”. The motion to fill the “pause” is, for example, moving the person's body, speaking a meaningless word, such as an interjection, or the like.
Takeshi Nishikawa, Hiroaki Kawashima and Takashi Matsuyama, “Visual Filler: Visual Stimuli to Facilitate Smooth Communication over TV Conference System with Transmission Delay”, discloses an object expressing the “pause”. However, displaying such an object in the real images is unnatural in a human communication.
Furthermore, overlapping the object disclosed in Japanese Published Patent Application No. H11-224152 with the anthropomorphic object corresponding to the motion information and displaying the overlapped image are also unnatural in human communication.